Riga Represented at the World’s Leading Smart City and Mobility Forum — Smart City Expo 2025 in Barcelona

From November 4–6, 2025, Riga participated in the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona — one of the world’s largest annual events dedicated to urban smart solutions and innovation. The event gathered more than 27,000 participants, 592 speakers, and representatives from over 140 countries.
This marked the fourth time Riga participated with its own stand. However, for the first time, Riga presented its Innovation Ecosystem in collaboration with partners from the academic, public, and private sectors.

Riga — Part of the Nordic & Baltic Innovation Community

Riga was represented within the Nordic & Baltic Pavilion, alongside delegations from Finland (Helsinki, Tampere, Vantaa, Espoo, Oulu) and Estonia (Tallinn).
Riga’s Innovation Ecosystem stand included the City of Riga (City Development Department and Riga Digital Agency), the University of Latvia, the Transport and Telecommunication Institute, LMT, WeAreDots, Bruntor, and the innovation platform VEFRESH.
This year’s main goal was to showcase Riga as a testbed for smart solutions, emphasizing the city’s key strengths: openness to collaboration with businesses and academia, access to urban infrastructure and data, and the opportunity to pilot innovative solutions in a real-life urban environment.

Hosted Events and Knowledge Exchange

In collaboration with VEFRESH, Riga hosted the official opening event of the Nordic & Baltic Pavilion, attended by representatives of the embassies of Latvia, Finland, and Estonia, as well as municipal leaders. That same day, Riga and VEFRESH hosted the Nordic & Baltic Innovation Ecosystems Event, including the panel discussion “Urban Air Mobility: Ready for Takeoff or Grounded by Reality?” featuring Latvian experts and representatives from Riga’s own 5G-focused urban air mobility projects — 5G4LIVES and CITYAM. The discussion emphasized 5G connectivity, the role of cities in air mobility development, and the need for a unified European regulatory framework for autonomous aerial vehicles, particularly BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) drones.
During a mobility session hosted by Forum Virium Helsinki, Riga shared its collaboration with WeAreDots in the EVOROADS project, which uses AI to detect infrastructure damage on cycle paths, with a special focus on protecting vulnerable road users. In the session “IoT Solutions for Cities” organized by the City of Tampere, participants highlighted that technology must enhance, not complicate, people’s lives — demonstrating how IoT and 5G support safer and more sustainable cities. Riga presented its participation in various European cooperation networks (OASC, EDIC, Living-in.EU, ERRIN, Eurocities), reinforcing the belief that the city is a service provider, and the citizen is the user.
The European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA) Director Marina Zanchi and her team also visited the Riga stand to learn more about the progress of the 5G4LIVES project and Riga’s broader innovation efforts.

Riga’s Participation in International Panels and Sessions

Riga’s representatives actively contributed to several high-level international sessions:

EUROCITIES & Barcelona Supercomputing Centre Roundtable – “Urban Digital Twins: From Vision to Practice”, where cities shared experiences on developing and applying digital twins in urban governance
Living-in.EU Panel – “European Cities and GenAI: Examples, Challenges and Opportunities”, focused on the potential and challenges of generative AI in public sector use.
Open & Agile Smart Cities & Communities (OASC) Panel – “From Silos to Synergy: Local Innovation through Interoperability”, in which Riga, Aarhus, and Fundão shared how data, collaboration, and interoperability are key to digital transformation.
International AI Club Roundtable, hosted by the Greater Paris Metropolis, where cities exchanged strategies and visions for using AI in urban innovation.
European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (EDIC) session, where Riga emphasized that IoT and digital twins must be human-centered tools for better governance. Riga also announced its coordination of Latvia’s participation in the EDIC Mobility & Logistics initiative focused on the future European mobility data space.

Riga’s Role in EIT Urban Mobility Events

As one of EIT Urban Mobility’s leading partner cities, Riga took part in several closed and public sessions:

City Club Advisory Group – discussions on current initiatives and upcoming changes in innovation funding and collaboration models.
Closed Session: Shared Autonomous Vehicles – where public transport operators, cities, and companies discussed regulatory, funding, and business model challenges around AVs in Europe.
Panel: Rethinking Impact: New Metrics for Smarter Urban Mobility – exploring how to move from traditional KPIs to data-driven, inclusive indicators in mobility projects.
Panel: Investing in Smart Mobility: Bridging Innovation and Infrastructure – addressing the funding gap and unlocking wider deployment of smart solutions in cities.
Representatives from Rīgas Satiksme visited Barcelona’s tram depot to understand operations and innovations in public transport, and joined a closed session on cybersecurity in cities, emphasizing transport system protection.
The Riga stand was also included in the official EIT Urban Mobility exhibition tour, during which representatives from several countries learned about Riga’s smart mobility initiatives and projects.

Why Was This Participation Important?

Riga’s participation in Smart City Expo World Congress 2025 marked a significant milestone in strengthening the city’s international visibility as a smart and future-ready city. The event showcased Riga’s capability as a real-world testbed for innovation, highlighted collaboration between the research, business, and public sectors, and created opportunities to build new and strengthen existing partnerships.
It also provided valuable insights into smart city trends across Europe and globally, offering knowledge, contacts, and project collaboration potential. Most importantly, it confirmed Riga’s readiness to be an active member of the European community of cities, committed to driving digital, inclusive, and sustainable transformation.